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How hard is the CLEP?

I'm enrolled at a college for the fall, and i'm considering taking the CLEP exams to get rid of some silly classes that i've been set up to take in the first semester.

Right now, i'm registered to take College Algebra and Trigonometry classes. These are two separate classes, and I believe they make up a total of 5 hours. The best part is that not only can I not apply these credits to my major, but they also can't be applied toward my overall GPA. Talk about a waste of time and money!

I didn't quite pass my college's math placement test, but it had some questions that I thought were very unusual, or to put it bluntly, pointless. Questions such as: find the log of a number, the sine value of an angle, and the secant value of an angle.. all without a calculator! Is anyone these days actually taught how to derive those in high school? I almost wondered if the tests weren't created before the invention of calculators.

Does anyone know how difficult CLEP math tests are? My college requires a score of 58/80 on them for a passing grade, but if it has questions of a similar nature to those, I think i'm going to have to bury myself in a book for a few months to pass it.

Clep exams are easy because what you see in a clep study book you will see on the test. Even if you go to the website they tell you exactly what to study and break down what will be on the test in percentages. Its a multiple choice test and you do not get points off for wrong answers. Go for it what do you have to lose?

>>You want to test out of trig and you can't find the sin of an angle without a calculator? Where they standard angles, like 30 degrees, 60 degrees and so on? Ditto on secant and logs.

No, where they aren't standard angles or numbers. Such as,

Find the sine of an angle of 22 degrees.

Find the secant of an angle of 48 degrees.

Find the log of the number 1.6823.

Maybe my textbooks just didn't cover that. Are you able to solve those questions without a calculator? I'm under the impression that they can't be solved without memorizing some lengthy and complicated formulas that most textbooks today do not teach. I had a rather non-standard high school curriculum though.

Ah, those are harder then. Was the test multiple choice? If not then yes, those aren't really reasonable without a calculator. If they were then they could have been elimination questions where you were supposed to see that it had to be positive or negative, and then had to be between two values. At any rate I take back my question and good luck on the CLEP.

My son took the college algebra CLEP. He scored a 65 out of 80 pts. He went in and took it cold, didn't look up anything on it, and he fessed up and said he rather didn't pay a whole lot of attention while taking it. I believe that you need a 50/80 to pass college algebra, so he passed. Now, he had taken calculus his senior year, but not AP calc ... and as he said it's a bunch of different skills that he hadn't used in awhile. Really, not bad at all.

On your transcript does it mention what score you got on the clep? Or does it just say if you passed it or not?

And how hard is it to get a 50 on the College Algebra Clep? I have been studying for a few days now, and I have my exam on Tuesday. Do you think thats enough studying to get a 50 on the College Algebra Clep?

Bilind2007,
My S got his score immediately from the university testing center where he took the exam as it's all computerized. They tell you that it's an unoffical score, and that you will receive the official score in a few weeks. However, when we did a degree audit, which he can do on his university website, he already showed credit for having CLEPPED out of the college algebra class. So, it happened almost over night. As for studying, I couldn't tell you. I think it depends on each student. My kids have never studied for any math exam; they wouldn't know how. My daughter breathes math, she loves it so much. My S does well; just can't stand it particularly, which is why he didn't want to take the algebra class. <g> Good luck!

CLEP isn't too bad. I had to get a 75/80 for sociology credit. I bought a soc textbook and a CLEP testprep book, studied them for about a month, took the test, and got a 77. I think, too, math would be less difficult, because the test is based on concepts and not on random facts. If you understand the concepts, I think you would do fine.

Yea, the most awesome part of CLEP is that you know your score immediately after taking the test.

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